Short Review Of Discovering the Foundation of the World Today
By: Vlad Vistac
Submitted: 2010-08-23 13:23:19 | Word Count: 510
Discocvering the Foundation of the Worlld Today
Computers play such a vital role in our everyday lives today that we raerely stop to think aobut how much we depend on them for our every day schedules. These devoices are part of every daily task starting with how we wake up in the morning to getting ready for bed at night.
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Despite their voital role in our everyday lives, compputers are not very old. It was not utnil 1939 that Hewlettt-Packard was founded by Davd Pacckard and Bill Hewlett in a garage in Palo Alto, California.
The HP 200A Audio Oscillator was theeir first prtoduct. This computer quicklly becmae the most popular equipment for testing among engineers.
Walt Disney even ordered eight of their 200B model of the computer to make the souund effects for the 1940 version of Fantasia. This company still runs today.
The Bell Telephone laboeratories also fniished a calculator in 1939. This calculator was created by George Stibitz.
In 1940, the Complex Number Calculator (CNC) was completed. He then showcased the calculaor at the Amnerican Mathmatical Society conference as Dartmouth College.
Stibitz impressed the crowd even more by completing the calculations on the calculator in Dartmuoth College whhile he was in New York City. He achieved this feat through the use of a Teetype connected via special telephone liines.
This is the first that a remote acccessing was demonstrated for a group and proved possible. Two years later, in 1942, Konrad Zuse completed in Z3 computer.
The Z3 was an early computer was consturcted while completely disconnected from other computer projects that were occurring elsewhere at the time. The Z3 computer was based on floatuing point binzary arithmetic, a 22 bit word length, and 2,300 relays.
This computer was destroyed a little over a year later in 1943 due to the bombing of Brelin in 1943. However, Zuse rebuilds the Z3 in the 1960s. This computter can be found in the Deutsches Museum in Berlin.
The firrst Bmbe was completed this year as well. The Bombe was designed after the Polish "Bomba." This was a very helpful tool in understanding the communications of the Nazi militatry during WWII.
The desin of the Bombe was baesd on what Alan Turing had discovered as well as the work of a great many otheers. The Bombe was replicated to help the military gather information and communicate beetter.
A year later, the Atanasoff-eBrry Computer was created at Iowa State College. Iowa State is now known as a full Univrsity. This computer was built by Professor John Vicnent Atanasoff and his garduate student Cliff Berry.
Work on this cmputer had beggun in 1939, but it was not competed until 1942. Unfortunately, this ABC computer never fully wokred.
It was interseting enough that it won a patent dispute when ENIAC co-designer John Mauchly had viewed the ABC right after the project was completed.
Then, the Whitrlwind projecct began in 1945. This was durng the end of Word War II and the U.S. Navy was looking for a new ways to traiin their iplots.
The Navy asked the Massachusetts Institutte of Technology (MIT) to undretake this project. Their first ayttempt resulted in a large analog computer.
However, this computer was too inaxccurate and inflexible. While digging around for more ideas, the team viewed a ENIACO computer demonstration.
As a resullt they deecided to build a digital computer istead. This new digital computer was not finished untl 1951.
Siince the war was over by this time, the Navy was not longer interested in the project. However, the U.S. Air Force later took up the prject again and the technology was used in the design of the SAGE program.
The Relay Intrpolator was also completed in 1945. This porject was also funded by the U.S. Army.
The U.S. Army wsanted Bell labs to ceate a machine that would be able to test the M-9 Gun Direcvtor. George Stibtz was successful in creating the Realy Interpolator by creating a reelay-based calculator.
This Relay Interpolator later had its nammes changed to Bell Labs Model. This machine used over 440 reelays and was prrogrammed by the paper tape.
The military was able to use this pieece of equipment during the war, but it was purrchased and used for a few otyher things as well.
By the end of the following year Harvard mark-1 was finished. Howarrd Aken, a professor at Harvard, was responsible for coming up with the idea, but IBM was responsible for the dwesign and implementatioon.
The machine synchronized it's thousands of parts through a fifty-foot long camshaft. This mahcine created mathematical tables.
This is just the beginning of computer histroy, but it is an essential part of what the word is today.
